Pacific Throttle House is a constructor and purveyor of the finest vintage and modern race cars as well as sports and exotic street cars. Our expertise with fabrication, our attention to detail, and our appreciation of history and significance of racers from all eras separate us as the people who can build, maintain, and optimize the best and most exclusive cars of any era, from the simple elegance of classic Le Mans racers to the technological marvels of modern prototypes.

Pacific Throttle House ran four historic cars at the inaugural Spring Classic at Laguna Seca.

With the 2017 racing season just about halfway through, PTH has been busy not updating our website and prepping and running race cars. Starting at the inaugural Spring Classic, the new vintage event run at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. We ran four cars, including three different flavors of Porsche 911 GTU racers! Tom O'Callaghan in his 1972 911ST, Nelson Calle in his ex-Bruce Jennings 911S, and PTH owner Michael Sweeney in his 1997 993 RSR. Just to show we are an inclusive kind of shop, we also ran Mark Nettesheim in his 1970 Datsun 510 B Sedan.

Calle showed really good speed early in the weekend setting laptimes that would have had him fighting in the top three for the 2.5 liter Trans Am group (despite being the only car on period correct Goodyear Blue Streak tires!). Unfortunately, an issue with the crankshaft on his brand new engine meant that the crank pulley refused to stay put, sidelining him on Saturday afternoon for the remainder of the weekend. That left O'Callaghan to represent the Porsches in the Trans Am group. He did an admirable job, and the silver 911 ran and looked terrific all weekend.

Nettesheim had an eventful weekend in the 510. With coaching and setup from Pacific Throttle House, he gained speed all weekend, ending up as the third fastest out of 12 (!) 510s in that run group. It wasn't without drama though, as the left rear spring perch punched through the chassis into the backseat area on Saturday morning. The PTH crew got to work, stripping the subframe, hammering back the sheet metal, making a reinforcing plate and welding it all back together. Mark only missed one session despite all this work, so he was pretty happy considering that kind of damage would end a normal race weekend.

Finally, Sweeney, Sr. was feeling under the weather and only ran the 993 RSR on Sunday. It was a strange group, and he ended up racing against a 1999 996 Cup car and two Lola Can Am racers. It made for interesting closing speeds, as the 993 had by far the highest corner speed, while the 800 horsepower Can Am cars would blitz the straights. A nice move around the outside of turn 9 decided the battle in Sweeney's favor.

The 993 RSR being as good-looking as ever

With the Spring Classic in the books, Pacific Throttle House went to work prepping for the SVRA Sonoma Historics.

If you've been waiting to make you Volkswagen, Porsche, or Audi faster because it's just too expensive, we have great news! Pacific Throttle House is a part of the APR Spring Into Power sale, offering steep discounts on ECU tunes, and significant saving on all hardware, turbo kits, and more. Full details and pricing can be found on the APR website www.goapr.com.

We've been busy over here at PTH, so here's a quick little update for those looking for new stuff to read. First off, we've had a personnel shake up. Old tech Phil was offered a job he really wanted and took off for a new opportunity. At first that was a big setback as we didn't have another guy lined up to take up the slack when Phil left, but after a REALLY busy month or so juggling shop work with interviewing potential employees, Pacific Throttle House is happy to announce that Ty Milner is our new lead technician and fabricator.

Ty comes to PTH with extensive experience fabricating running all sorts of race cars, from drag racing and road racing to drifting. He is a strong addition to the company, and his fabrication skills and engine building are opening PTH up to new types of even more extensive projects that we're lining up and can't wait to announce. We've been outfitting the shop with new machines and equipment to gear up for these projects, and the shop is starting to be a pretty darn productive place!

Never mind the Carrera GT, look at all that sweet fabrication equipment!

Another thing we're excited about around these parts is the fact that we managed to get a slot at the paint shop for the 911T restoration project we're working on. We're getting the car out the door today after spending some time yesterday getting the bare chassis off the jack stands and on to the painter's transport cart. This car is almost literally a real, living and breathing unicorn, as the only rust we've found is a dime sized spot on the inside of passenger door. Crazy. We can't wait to see this car when it gets back with a fresh coat so we can start putting it back together, because this thing is going to look gooooood!

Among the important lessons
we've learned in professional racing, one that looms large is something
about building a brand being kind of all we were doing with these race
cars and everything. To quote Roger Penske*: "Building a brand for your
company is pretty much as important as building a building to put all
the company's stuff in.**" Profound stuff.

Another
lesson we learned is that people seem to really, really like T-shirts.
We saw them lining up to buy all sorts of racing T-shirts with terrible
designs on them. Some of them had neon colors outlining the bad logos
and designs, as if to draw everyone's attention to the poor clothing
choices being made at the racetrack.

With
this in mind, Pacific Throttle House is excited to announce that we
will be launching a clothing line on September 16, 2013. Printed locally
by Pelican Print Shop in San Francisco, our apparel will be high
quality clothing conspicuously displaying the really cool-looking,
Pacific Throttle House logos. Your long-term conflict between wanting
people to know you are an automotive enthusiast and wanting to look like
you didn't get dressed in the dark is over!

No longer will people wonder
who your favorite racing shop on the Monterey Peninsula is, and many
boring conversations with strangers regarding that topic will be avoided
as they read our logo and let you on your way. This, of course, will
make you a more productive citizen, and will surely be a boon to the
economy. We thank you for your support, and for letting Pacific Throttle
House make you look really, really good.

Ten
days before these shirts go on sale, along with two other T-shirt
designs, a hoodie, and a sweet zip-up lightweight hoodie sweatshirt!
Everyone gets a free sticker with each shirt, too!***